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Autopilot highway driving within 12 months?

A British website interview with Elon Musk containing some often repeated comments but also some new stuff I was surprised by, including a suggestion for Google's self-driving car that got me to literally lol and some details about Tesla autopilot ambitions that I hadn't heard.

EM “Autonomous driving will get rolled out into cars quite rapidly, in the next year or so. We want to get to the point where you can go from highway on-ramp to highway off-ramp completely autonomously, without touching any controls, in the next 12 months.”

On Google's SD car:

“It’s not the most attractive thing. I haven’t seen it in person, but it’s only going to go 25mph, and it has two feet of foam bumper on the front. I’m not sure if it’s sending quite the right message. I hope they put an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button on the dash, which you can press and it’ll just go somewhere.” Tesla’s self-driving auto, he reassures us, is “not going to be some weird-looking thing. It’s going to be the car that you see now. The radar will be hidden inside the bumpers - the bumpers are plastic, so the radar can see through it - and the cameras are packaged into quite a small space, where the mirror is. If you look for them, you’ll be able to find them, but otherwise you won’t notice it.”

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I could see them actually putting the "I'm feeling lucky" button on it that's one thread connecting the google site back to it's earliest roots. I remember using it back in the day when it was still being run out of their dorm at Stanford that button captured what was novel and impressive about their search engine...that it actually often took you where you wanted on the first line. Alta Vista or other engines at the time often made you wade through a lot of irrelevant stuff (that happened to repeat the search terms a lot).

I've never even seen a video of Google's efforts working on a California freeway on ramp to off ramp, so doing that without Lidar in 12 months seems very impressive.

...remember that we're talking "Elon time" here, which has no relationship to actual clock time...

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I think that in fact it does. You just have to remember that there are about 687 Earth days to one Martian year. If you go back in time (Earth time, that is. Well, Martian time, too!) you'll see that factors out just about right.

I liked his acknowledgement that what BMW has done with the "i" series car bodies is impressive. He's not afraid to compliment a competitor when they do something innovative, the issue is that in general the EV competition is unremarkable, to put it mildly.

Explain like I am 5: How on earth would a model S autopilot work? There are only two sensors available, the parking sensors on some models and the GPS. These seem wholly inadequate to do this. Is there some google-style sensor packet in the works that would be available as a retrofit? That seems unlikely or impossible, yet nothing else works either.

Explain like I am 5: How on earth would a model S autopilot work? There are only two sensors available, the parking sensors on some models and the GPS. These seem wholly inadequate to do this. Is there some google-style sensor packet in the works that would be available as a retrofit? That seems unlikely or impossible, yet nothing else works either.

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I've assumed any autopilot functionality delivered by Tesla would require sensors that are not in production cars currently delivered.

The Cruise system discussion obviously belongs in the Autonomous Cars thread, and there is a link there also, but I thought that at least a link from this thread would be appropriate given they may be pushing the limits as much as anyone. Lots of details missing from that link though concerning the total capabilities of their system...

Generally speaking:
"The system will take control of the car’s steering, braking, and acceleration to keep you in your lane."

Explain like I am 5: How on earth would a model S autopilot work? There are only two sensors available, the parking sensors on some models and the GPS. These seem wholly inadequate to do this. Is there some google-style sensor packet in the works that would be available as a retrofit? That seems unlikely or impossible, yet nothing else works either.

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You need additional sensors, it will not be just a software upgrade. In the interview radar is mentioned to be hidden in the bumpers, that would be for detecting (metal) cars around your MS. In addition from what I remember they are planning to use just optical cameras like for locating the road marking etc. instead of the more expensive lidar google employs.

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